The e-bike trend will only accelerate getting out of shape while people like this one will stay in good shape much longer.
While having a few advantages, it's not universally great.
While having a few advantages, it's not universally great.
I have an e-bike and it’s enabled me to cycle on steep inclined and hilly roads that I would be unable to do otherwise. Having an e-bike encourages you to cycle a lot more than you typically would imo. I use it as my primary form of transportation.
I’m just surprised that people continue to use old bikes when the newer technology around them has continued to improve.
From the linked study: > E-bikers take longer trips by e-bike and bicycle, compared to cyclists.
> Physical activity gains from active travel are similar in e-bikers and cyclists.
The second point is non-obvious IMO and interesting.
The first point makes sense though IMO. AFAIK the majority of pedal bike trips are short ranges. A subset of bike riders travel larger distances. This averages out to be relatively short distances. An e-bike I believe is not attractive for a short distance (why pay the cost when a cheaper pedal bike that you will ride for 10 minutes would do just as well and for a fraction of cost?). I think it makes sense that e-bikes then push that distance-travel average up over conventional bikes.
My main use of a bike is X miles per day to work and back. Shopping trips and some weekend activities add miles, but the baseline is commuting. I'm not particularly athletic. I have some friends who commute on e-bikes, and I'm fully supportive. It's all good.
Switching to an e-bike won't add hours or miles to my baseline. I mention this anecdote only to illustrate that the effect of an e-bike depends heavily on circumstances.
I think a better generalization might be that an e-bike combined with a lifestyle change can result in better fitness. This is where I see the great benefit of e-bikes, and why I encourage my friends to get them.
Just spitballing a number, if the bike supplies 50% of the effort, then a lifestyle change could consist of increasing your use of a bike by 2x or more. This is not implausible because a lot of people get virtually no exercise at all.
Oddly enough the most frequent question I get about cycling is: "When are you going to get an e-bike?"
I think there will always be a few remaining uses for a bike that is cheap, maintainable by the owner, light enough to carry up a stairs or throw into a car, can be stored anywhere, indefinitely, and used on demand, doesn't catch fire, and is powered by the lipids stored in your body. ;-)
I read the abstract of the study you linked, and it does not say that people who use e-bikes are more fit than people who use regular bikes.
It says that e-biker have slightly less "metabolic equivalent task" minutes per week compared to cyclists.
Newer technology is not necessarily always better. A lot of the e-bike utility derives from having a working motor and battery. Those two are probably the most expensive fragile items in a bike. Good luck dealing with the fire when your battery explodes. Good luck getting home when your battery goes flat and you have to ride a heavier bike home and you are in the middle of nowhere because with a working battery you can. Oh, yes let's a buy a backup battery and increase your bike costs. Good luck getting a new battery when your bike supplier dies.
As an example, a replacement battery pack for the e-bike model I bought is 25% of the price of the bike. I'd assume the motor and other electronics would ring up to another 25%. Since I bought a cargo e-bike, there's really no meat motor bike to compare the remaining price to see how it aligns.
Any data available for how often that happens? I have never heard of a single instance, nor it even being a risk even.
> Good luck getting home when your battery goes flat and you have to ride a heavier bike home and you are in the middle of nowhere because with a working battery you can.
Indeed the 'stranded with a heavy bike' was a problem. Less so now that e-bike ranges are 60+ miles.
> Oh, yes let's a buy a backup battery and increase your bike costs
I don't think this makes sense. Have you heard of this as common? Do you know any manufacturers who recommend this? The shelf life of batteries is years and years. A replacement would be idle..
> Good luck getting a new battery when your bike supplier dies.
Bikes are relatively simple. Happily the wiring can be redone if need-be to retrofit to something new
And if a previous bike user switches to ebikes, generally they would have been considering another alternative instead (e.g. Motorbike, car, public transport, etc.)
And once they start with ebikes, I don't expect them to ever switch to mormal bikes anymore.
I don’t have one yet, but I’ve seen a dramatic increase of older people cycling up canyon roads on pedal assist e-bikes. They can do rides with e-bikes that they otherwise couldn’t, and they can go further and/or longer. I’m certain I’ll replace my all-mechanical cycle with an e-bike at some point, and I think it will help me stay in shape and continue to enjoy long-distance cycling as I age.
In town, people are replacing car trips to the store and the pub with e-bike rides. That’s both more active, and better for the environment, than car or motorcycle trips, no?
Not only that, as a cyclist, it’s been helpful to have more and more riders representing the need for bike lanes, bike safety, and bike awareness.
I don’t see any major downsides to the e-bike trend, and there are a lot of upsides. It seems universally great to me.
Just because an ebike can go further does not mean they are mostly used in that way. The proper thing to say is that bikes enable unfit people to go further than they could with a normal bike. Most fit people can cycle distances that ebike readers wouldn't do even if the bike can do it. How many people travel across cities with an ebike?
What types of distances are you thinking of? 'Most fit people's feel is a bit ambiguous since we are likely speaking about less than one third of the population (at least in the US).
Cross town trips seem to be a place where e-bikes shine IMO. At least gauging by the anecdata that e-bike commuters in the last 15 years have gone from rare to occasionally to the majority of bicycle commuters (at least on many days, and along my commute route, that is not the best connected and is at least 6 miles one way)
If you are doing a long trip you are right but most people will find some other way to do those trips even if they had infinite battery.
In practice, those that would go more than 70 miles round trip on a bike is a very limited number of people to begin with. Even given infinite battery and/or infinite time, it's just not a lot of people. Hence why I think the 'more than battery distance' aspect is not well appreciated. A car centric culture would just not even consider such distances as an option at all. Hence the perspective IMHO that going for more than 90 minutes is just a non option for everyone, even though it is.
My experience riding with e-bikes is how and why I come to say this. They simply can't do a century plus ride. For extreme distance rides (inter-state) - even more so. At those points, non motor is better. I've met just one person doing a tour on an e-bike (that is way less than 1% observed). While that is anecdata, it greatly contrasts with the ballpark 40% to 80% cyclists I observe commuting via e-bike vs non assist pedal bike.
time matters for most people. Thus what matters is how far they can get in about half an hour. It doesn't matter if we are talking about walking bikes, cars, helecopters: how ever far you get in half an hour matters.
I am of course explicitly not talking about most people. Which is my point - at greater ranges fewer people would be willing to bike, but e-bikes enable larger ranges, but at a point it flips back to non-assist.
sure fanatics will bike 100 mile, or some such, but the rest of us have lives to live and we don't have time to waste getting places. The destination is the point. That an ebike get us there in reasonable time is important, exercise is a nice side benefit.
Cycling is actually the fastest way to get around NYC and London most of the time if you’re able to keep a consistently high speed
I also live on top of a hill, and an ebike has greatly increased my will to commute, especially when cycling home after gym.
The problem is regulation. Any bike that has a throttle, or isn't capped to 25kph should be illegal to drive without registering it as a motor vehicle. Yet I've never seen anyone actually enforce this.